Ludobot Puns

Assignment 8 for ludobots: Random search resulting url: https://youtu.be/ShS4-XdJbgQ for assignment: https://www.reddit.com/r/ludobots/wiki/pyrosim/randomsearch

Im unable to get anything to run on Ludobots. Is it still operational?

In the past two weeks (sorry, no post last week)...

• Two new users, /u/kuler51 and /u/lo1201, have both progressed as far as assignment 6: they have successfully installed, run and made some initial modifications to a simulation in the Bullet physics engine.

• I have posted a new code-free robotics project that enables you to alter the robot and its environment.

• I gave a talk at Cornell University last week and spoke briefly about our experiences with this unique online course.

As always, thanks to those who have participated in --- and extended --- the course.

Regards,

Josh

5 figures: http://imgur.com/a/PUyTK

Ludobots MOOC Homepage

Hi there! I'm glad you found our subreddit. Ludobots is more than an online course, it's a MOOC! That's a Massively Open Online Course, where content is edited and added by the students for the students. There are no deadlines, no grades, and—with your help—no limits!

The subject of this MOOC is Evolutionary Robotics.

Ask your questions below, and we can start a discussion! :)

This week, /u/moschles was the third student to complete all of the robotics programming projects (his final submission is here). Moschles has not only completed the projects but also helped a number of other students working their way through the material. This user thus embodies the best of what we hope to achieve with our online course: continual and collaborative improvement and expansion of the course material.

Also, we have recently added a branch for those of you interested in machine learning and novel interactive technologies such as the Leap Motion device. This week /u/seikij posted correct submissions to the first two projects in this branch here and here.

Once again, thanks to all of you for participating.

~Josh

Hello all,

This past week on the online course /r/ludobots...

• /u/WorkingTimeMachin completed all of the projects in the programming track, making him the fourth student to do so.

• s/he also posted a helpful video about hillclimbers (and other simple search methods) here.

• I have added a new project to the growing code-free track, for those of you who want to learn about evolutionary robotics without having to code. The three projects in this track so far are

• Code-free robotics: download, install and run.

• Code-free robotics: play back your evolved robot.

• Code-free robotics: speed up evolution.

• I'll post more code-free projects in the coming weeks.

Again, thanks for participating and/or contributing.

~Josh

http://imgur.com/kDl8N9n

The course is at /r/ludobots.

Instructions about how to submit your final project idea are here.

It's been a year since our lab launched the first reddit-based online course, /r/ludobots.

It's been a great year, thanks to all of you. So far...

• we have over 500 students signed up to the course,

• we are hosting about 500 unique IPs a month,

• many students have submitted solutions to the programming projects (the red dots in this visualization of the course),

• many students have added their own projects for others to complete (the small blue dots in the visualization),

• many students have volunteered to help others, acting in effect as virtual Teaching Assistants (a special shout-out here to /u/moschles for going far above and beyond the call of duty),

• and finally, thanks to all of your contributions and improvements to the course, my students and I have had the opportunity to brag about your achievements to audiences in Denmark, Barcelona, and Google headquarters.

If you're interested in learning about robotics---or AI, or evolutionary algorithms, or artificial neural networks---I'd like to invite you to try our course out, and help us to make it even better this coming year.

Thanks,

Josh

Edit: I forgot to thank /u/snaylser, /u/linpressionism, and the other students here in Vermont who put in way too much time and effort to moderate and run Ludobots!

Here is a video summary and here was the original advertisement for the study.

The site is still up if you want to try designing your own robots.

The paper we published today is available here, and the other four papers (along with our lab's full publication list) are available here.

Thanks again /r/ludobots for helping us all create and understand intelligent machines better.

~Josh

For this project, core04 through core10 will be redone in Unity3D/C#. The goal of this project will be to reduce the overhead and learning curve in these core assignments, hopefully making the ludobots MOOC more accessible with a higher retention rate. This project will be carried out by rebuilding each of the core assignments using Unity3D and C# in order to reach the same end result - a simulated robot with a walking fitness function which can be further used in new projects. Individual core modules may differ due to quirks and features of Unity not present in Bullet.

Although Unity is a game engine and has drag-and-drop GUI features for the placement of physical simulation objects, scene objects will be instantiated programmatically as much as possible in order to have a high level of flexibility and modularity in the scene and robot.

My Koan Group recieved a suggestion from our assistant teacher to learn how ludobot's system works by reading the code of students who did ludobot assignments in previous years.

(You can also PM me the link to the code, or I can link you my ShanghAI profile link if you can't share it on reddit, or need proof that I'm a student. Thanks in advance.)

...and if it is a bad place for asking: anyone can suggest where can I ask for code? I couldn't find the participants of ludobot assignments on the site -- just the assignments themselves on (linked) www.uvm.edu.

Here's the homepage

Hi all,

DrJosh here. I'm a professor who is running (for the first time) my robotics course here at UVM and also, in parallel, on reddit: www.reddit.com/r/ludobots.

My UVM students are hard at work on their final projects, all of which are listed here. If you have ideas that might help them flesh out these projects, just click on 'Discuss This Project' on any of the project wiki pages.

If you'd like to make your own project, start here.

On behalf of my students I thank you for your input,

Josh